An embellishment
is anything that enhances the appearance of clothing
or fashion accessories without actually
having any functional purpose. A good example of this would be a
nonfunctional fly on a women's boxer short.
Certainly a women does not need a fly on her
underwear, yet on occasion a fly is added to the
garment.

In sewing
and garment construction, an embellishment is
anything that adds design interest to the article
of clothes being developed.
A very common use of embellishment is the
utilization of embroidery, printing, bows, cord, or
rhinestones. In addition, you will often find
beads, buttons, toggles, zippers,
appliqué, piping
or lace used to embellish women's fashion or men's
fashion. When using embellishment treatments such
as piping, designers can use subtle self fabric
piping or a more loud and visible contrast fabric
piping.

In addition to adding
additional trim accessories, a fashion designer can
further embellish their clothing by using fancy
stitch work such as zig-zag stitching in places that
would not typically require such a stitch
selection. Actually, I am not certain that a stitch
would officially classify as an embellishment, but
since I am the one writing this description of
"embellishment" I have some poetic license at my
disposal... Anyway, I personally think that fancy
stitch work should be considered a form of
embellishment. If you disagree, I guess you can
stop reading this article.. Better yet, If you
disagree with the views expressed here, please
contact Apparel Search to voice your opinion. You
are welcome to contact us with your thoughts. We
may adjust this article based on your suggestions...

Buy the way, what is the
difference between "Trim" and "Embellishment". For
that matter, what is the story with the term "Trims
& Notions". All of these terms appear to be very
similar. Possibly they categories contain the same
items... In my opinion, embellishments are items
that are NOT required for the proper construction of
a garment (they are extra bells and whistles to
improve the visual appearance; but are not required
for proper fit or quality of the garment). The
trims or notions on the other hand are items that
are more of a necessity to the garment. For
example, thread, zippers, brand labels, care
labels. Also, I would conceder hangers, hangtags
and price tickets garment trimming as these are
often required to complete a garments so that it is
ready to be sold.

Types of trimming
may include but are not limited to the following:

Bias tape

Braid

Buttons

Cord

Embroidery

Interfacing

Lace for edgings or
insertions

Passementerie

Piping

Ribbon

Ruffles or frills

Tassels

This gets confusing
because some quote un quote trim items can
also be used for embellishments. For an example,
sewing thread can be considered as a trim because it
is required when sewing a t-shirt. However, sewing
thread can also be utilized on the t-shirt as an
embellishment by using alternate colors, stitch type
or stitch placement. So, would you call thread a
trim or an embellishment?

On Apparel Search we have
bundled most of the trims and notions into a
section that we currently reference as our
clothing components section. In that
section, we list manufacturers of "trimming",
"notions" and "embellishments".

If you are looking for
embroidery or printing as a form of embellishing
your clothing, you can check the
apparel contractor section for
facilities to assist you.

If you have any thoughts on
how we can improve this article, please let us
know.